Special Iran Panel Hears Reagan

January 27, 1987|The New York Times

WASHINGTON -- President Reagan answered questions Monday from a special White House panel about his role in the Iran-Contra affair.

The meeting Monday was the first time Reagan had been interviewed by anyone other than his own staff members about his role in the affair. He established the special commission, headed by former U.S. Sen. John Tower, in November and asked it to examine the National Security Council and its role in the Iran arms deals.

In a statement issued after the 75-minute closed session in the Oval Office, the White House said Reagan had answered all the panel`s questions on the origins of the Iran arms deal and his role in carrying it out.

The White House said Reagan volunteered to meet with the panel again, but that the commission members, who continued to meet into the evening, had not decided whether they wanted to speak with the president again.

The three-member review panel was appointed after the disclosure that proceeds from the arms sales to Iran may have been diverted to the Nicaraguan rebels. Reagan has said he was not fully informed about that diversion.

Some of Reagan`s staff members have given contradictory accounts of how the arms deal was planned and carried out. One of the Tower commission`s jobs is to try to resolve the contradictions, but officials familiar with the commission`s work have said they were not making much progress.

In a related development Monday, the White House confirmed that when Secretary of State George P. Shultz asked Donald T. Regan, the White House chief of staff, last spring about reports indicating that American arms were being sold to Iran, Regan professed ignorance of the plans.

But White House spokesman Larry Speakes insisted Regan had not misled Shultz because Regan had in fact been unaware of some elements of the deal.

Speakes also confirmed recent reports that whenever Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the former National Security Council aide who managed the arms sales, discussed the program with the president, the focus was always on how the sales would bear on the release of the American hostages.